ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how children’s development is influenced not just by parents but also other children, both peers and siblings. I look particularly at middle childhood, a period that I am defining as roughly 6 to 12 years old. This is a transformative time, akin to what in other species is called juvenility, and its significance has been underestimated. Here we see a huge rush of hormones in a still too little understood process called adrenarche (Campbell, 2011). Adrenarche particularly involves the release of androgens, hormones which seemingly stimulate brain development as well as sex differentiation, all well before puberty. We also see a big shift away from parental influence, as important interpersonal skills are learnt and honed, emotional regulation takes a step forward and group life comes to take centre stage
In Western societies the nuclear family plays a more central role than in many cultures, and much developmental research focuses on parent-child interactions, and less on siblings or peers. In many other cultures children are part of a larger social group from much earlier on and are regularly interacting with, and influenced by, others across the age range. In many hunter-gatherer communities infants were kept with their mothers until the next child was born, and then spent more time with peers, siblings and other adults, and socialisation occurred in such groups. For example, one study showed that Polynesian children, once they could walk, were ‘released’ into the care of three or four-year-old siblings (Martini, 1994), with mothers and other adults nearby. Often when the older siblings left them with their mothers, they would cry with disappointment, such was the bond and reliance on peers and siblings.
